Government should be small

Why vote Libertarian? To take a stand for your right to keep every dollar you earn. It's a stand against corporate welfare and socialism. Libertarians favor repealing the income tax, letting $3 trillion per year benefit the families of the workers who earned it. At last week's rally in Indianapolis, Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne pointed out that the indigent and senior citizens were better off -- and healthcare costs were lower -- before welfare, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare took away choices about investing, insurance, doctors and treatments. Libertarians don't want to pay for wasteful programs or pork-barrel handouts to companies that buy influence with Republicans and Democrats. The more votes Libertarians get, the more politicians fear we will derail their gravy train.\nWhy vote Libertarian? To help end the insane war on drugs. Police arrested more people last year on marijuana charges than for all violent crimes. "The war on drugs has created a revolving door prison system. In goes the pot smoker; out comes the psychopathic killer, the kidnapper or the child molester released on early parole," Browne said. Federal figures show more than 4 million people have been arrested on marijuana charges during the Clinton-Gore administration, although both admit they smoked marijuana. Browne asks them, and George W. Bush, "Would you be better men today if you had been thrown in jail for 10 years or more for your 'youthful indiscretions?'" The more votes Libertarians get, the less the drug warriors are able to pretend their hypocritical piety is good for America.\nWhy vote Libertarian? To say, "I'm sick of paying for my government to spy on me." Libertarians love the entire Bill of Rights. Today, we must fight for the right to be free from unwarranted search and seizure: the Fourth Amendment. The U.S. government "monitors" our bank accounts, healthcare records, e-mail messages and more. Your message to a friend including a suspicious word such as "bomb" or "weed" might be detected and saved by the FBI's "DragonWare Suite" software. The FBI has already spent more than $2.4 million on e-mail surveillance programs, and it's upgrading them. Narcotics officers looking for indoor marijuana growers ask utility providers to hand over customers' records. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation wants bank tellers to quiz customers who deposit or withdraw unusually large amounts. Police expect hotel clerks and cleaning people to investigate and report "suspicious" behavior by guests. And drivers are pulled over for random checks. The more votes Libertarians get, the more seriously government agencies will take our tireless lobbying for the Fourth Amendment. \nWhy vote Libertarian? To show you want a noninterventionist foreign policy. We are all victims in the Middle East conflict: American taxpayers paid more than $150 billion during the past three decades in foreign aid to Israel and the Arab nations. That money has purchased more and more war. While it's illegal for you to donate more than $1,000 to a presidential candidate, President Bill Clinton spent millions to help defeat Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia. The United States has bombed 10 countries in the last two years alone. This aggressive policy is breeding hatred of America by other countries. The more votes Libertarians get, the closer we come to bringing the troops and funding home.\nWhy vote Libertarian? To work toward freeing the environment from its totalitarian captors. The world's worst polluters are making the pollution laws, protecting themselves and preventing citizens from exercising property rights to preserve land. Those with the most political clout -- the most money for lobbying -- get their way. Big businesses know the courts today won't recognize citizens' right to sue air polluters on the basis of trespass. But Libertarian courts would. Environmental groups such as the Nature Conservancy found private ownership is the best way to protect our resources. Look at how much the environment suffered under socialism in Eastern Europe. Central planning destroys the environment, just as surely as it destroys the economy. The more votes Libertarians get, the closer we come to putting polluters out of business permanently -- by suing rather than paying taxes to clean up their messes.\nWhy vote Libertarian? Because we can win. Three hundred Libertarians serve nationwide, compared with single-digit numbers for other alternative parties. Fourteen hundred Libertarian candidates are running on ballots in every state. That's twice as many as all the other third parties put together. You can have a major effect here in Bloomington by voting for Steve Dillon for judge. \nRemember Mel Gibson in "The Patriot" asking, "Why should I trade one tyrant 3,000 miles away for 3,000 tyrants one mile away?" Remember him at the end of "Braveheart," refusing to renounce his own sovereignty, screaming "Freedom!"? The least we can do is vote Libertarian. \nPlease visit www.lp.org and www.harrybrowne.org.